Opens across Canada
Friday, November 29, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Toronto
Friday, December 6, Cinema du Musee, Montreal
Friday, December 6, Vancity, Vancouver
(Full list of openings at the bottom of the release)
“I have a good time aging. I love the wrinkles, the hands… and I love to see things getting to be naturally, vaguely destroyed.” – Agnès Varda
The “Queen of Cinema”’s final film opens in Canada following her Academy Award nominated sensation Faces Places.
Agnès Varda’s Varda by Agnès is a fitting closure for her loyal audience, and a portal for newcomers to her prodigious career.
An unpredictable documentary from a fascinating storyteller, Varda by Agnès sheds light on her experience as a director, bringing a personal insight to what she calls “cine-writing”.
Synopsis
Agnès Varda takes a seat on-stage at a French opera house. This professional photographer, installation artist and pioneer of the Nouvelle Vague is an institution of French cinema but a fierce opponent of any kind of institutional thinking.
In this film, Varda offers insights into her oeuvre, using excerpts from her work to illustrate her artistic visions and ideas. Her lively, anecdote-rich and clever talk is divided into two sections. Firstly, she elucidates her ‘analogue period’ from 1954 to 2000, in which the director is in the foreground. This was the young woman who set out to reinvent cinema, someone who was always open to chance and to moments of documentary, even in fiction; who, with every new film, changed her narrative style. In the second part, Agnès Varda focuses on the years from 2000 to 2018, and shows how she uses digital technology to look at the world in her own, unique way. And started a new life as a visual artist, showing pieces that film goers have never seen.
Whether in front of the camera or behind it, Agnès Varda is a visual storyteller who eschews convention and prescribed approaches to drama. Together with some of her fellow travellers, she takes the audience on a journey through her world of unorthodox images.
Director’s statement:
In 1994, with a retro at the French Cinémathèque, I published a book entitled VARDA BY AGNÈS. 25 years later, the same title is given to my film made of moving images and words, with the same project: give keys about my body of work. I give my own keys, my thoughts, nothing pretentious, just keys.
Films We Like
Founded by award-winning documentary filmmaker Ron Mann (Comic Book Confidential, Altman) Films We Like is a boutique distributor of documentary, independent, and international films in Canada. Recent releases include Before You Know It, Human Nature and Greener Grass.
Running time: 115 minutes
France, 2019
French with English subtitles
Download hi-res photos, press notes…
Media Contact:
Virginia Kelly
V Kelly & Associates